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The
name of this website, Asiafrica: Linking the Two Continents,
reflects its aim of creating space for news, information and
material around the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Asia and Africa,
linkages between them and lessons that the two regions can
learn from each other.
This
website has its roots in the vibrancy of community, arts and
other groups from Africa and Asia that found a venue to chat,
discuss and compare notes during the activities of the Africa-Asia
Interaction on AIDS initiative (supported by the Bangkok
and Nairobi offices of the Rockefeller Foundation) at the
XV International AIDS Conference held in Bangkok, Thailand
in July 2004.
Key areas of discussion were the importance of family and community to prevention, care and treatment and mitigation efforts, and protecting the future of families in the face of the pandemic. Indeed, for some individuals living with HIV/AIDS who came from Africa and Asia, seeing HIV-positive people from the opposite side of world lifted their spirits so that they focused on what they could do, rather than on the possibility of death.
Stories and features on these issues and more will be followed through this website.
Both continents have countries that face varying levels of the pandemic and the challenges of poverty at the same time. They are home to both countries where the threat remains grave and has become a leading cause of death among people in their most productive years, and others where government and community efforts have seen a fall in new cases.
At the same time, this project also seeks to go beyond the common refrain heard at conferences — that Asia faces an African-style scenario if it does not act quickly enough. Warnings may be good, but this is not the only link between Asia and Africa as they face one of their biggest human-development challenges.
Learning from the Africa-Asia dialogue — Inter Press Service (IPS) Asia-Pacific produced the daily conference newspaper 'TerraViva' at the AIDS conference in July 2004 with a section linking Asia and Africa — IPS Asia-Pacific and IPS Africa have embarked on this project aimed as an information bridge between the two continents.
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